


Memory is a Cage

by EdosianOrchids901



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Anxiety, Claustrophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s07e03 Afterimage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 08:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18869074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdosianOrchids901/pseuds/EdosianOrchids901
Summary: Claustrophobia is inconvenient on a station with so many turbolifts





	Memory is a Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue prompt from Tumblr: "I can't breathe."

The walls loomed, tipped, collapsed.

Garak clutched the edge of his table. Deep breaths, in and out. That was all he needed. Deep breaths.

_As if I haven’t spent hours forcing myself to take deep breaths,_ he thought. The entire day consisted of one deep breath after another.

Just breathe. Just calm down. Just relax. The asinine platitudes given by those who’d never endured true panic, never known the crushing weight of rubble. Rubble didn’t care how deeply you breathed, how loudly you screamed. It was immutable, oppressive, eternal.

But now, the rubble existed only in his mind. When he looked up, his shop walls stood innocently in place. He waited, challenging them to move in again.

They remained still, and Garak bent over his work. The fabric caught on his trembling fingers. Something exploded in his chest and he hurled both dress and tailoring tool onto the table.

The tool skidded across the smooth surface before crashing against a bolt of cloth with a satisfying thud. The dress, however, simply fluttered downward, brushed against the table edge, hung there for a mere second, and then slid lifelessly to the floor.

“If that isn’t typical,” Garak muttered. He bit back the seething mass of rage, fingers digging into his thigh. A true Obsidian Order agent wouldn’t allow himself to knocked off his place by a disobedient garment.

And yet, the dress seemed to mock him from the floor. _You can’t even control fabric. How can you ever hope to control yourself?_

“Perhaps I’m not a true agent anymore,” he said to the inert pile of cloth. “Perhaps I never was. After all, didn’t I repeatedly fall prey to sentiment? And now… I’m certainly not doing much to serve my people these days.”

Informing on them, yes. Fighting against them, yes. Killing them all, yes.

Serving them? No.

“Elim?”

Garak jerked his head up. How had he missed the footsteps? “Ah, Julian.”

Deep furrows carved into Julian’s brow. He strode through the shop and pressed his fingertips to Garak’s temple. “God, your pulse is racing again. Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine.” No time for weakness. “Whatever are you doing here? It’s late.”

“Precisely. It’s late, and you never came home.”

Ah. That. Garak wriggled out from under Julian’s ministrations and scooped the dress off the floor. He deposited the outfit on the table—more calmly this time—and gathered errant scraps of cloth. “I was working.”

“You looked like you were talking to a dress.”

“Yes, well, it’s like plants. The clothes grow better if you talk to them.” The stranglehold on his throat refused to ease. He shook the scraps out and laid them on the table one by one, then neatly folded them.

“That’s…nice,” Julian said in that _I’m not entirely sure if you’re joking_ tone. “But really. It’s incredibly late, and you need rest. You’re under a lot of stress lately—”

“Oh, am I? I hadn’t noticed.” Really. What was it with humans and their constant need to state the obvious?

“—under a lot of stress lately,” Julian pressed on, “and it’s important that you rest. You’ll never recover otherwise.”

Recovery. Another odd human concept. As a Cardassian, there was no recovering from those sorts of memories. One either integrated the experiences into their proper place and went on with life…or one didn’t.

Perhaps that was what Julian meant by recovery. The experiences couldn’t be erased, not even by humans’ fading memories. But learning to live with those memories, to continue with life…that was a necessary, if uncomfortable, process.

Garak added another folded scrap to the stack. “Sleep evades me these days, my dear, as I believe you well know.”

“Garak.” Julian leaned against the table, and Garak edged away. “I know you’re not sleeping well, but that’s exactly why you need to come home. Even if you can’t actually sleep, the rest will be beneficial. It’s better for you than spending all night…”

_Being completely miserable and questioning why I’m alive?_ “Brooding?”

“Well…yes.”

Garak sighed. Not many options left at this point. Oh, he could always create a scene with Julian, the same sort of thing he’d done to Ezri. But that hadn’t been fair to her at all, and lashing out at Julian would be horrifically cruel. The good doctor was only trying to help, annoying though it was.

Yet perhaps a fight was preferable to admitting why he couldn’t go home.

_Ridiculous. Pull yourself together, Elim._

“Yes, of course. You’re quite right.” The rest would benefit him, leave him fresh for the miseries of the next day. If only he could actually make it to their quarters.

Julian’s shoulders relaxed and a smile played on his face. “Good. I’m sure you didn’t eat, so we’ll have dinner before bed.”

“And kanar.” Goodness, he needed kanar. He briefly considered raiding Quark’s private stock. The bar was closed at present, but between one ex-spy and one genetically enhanced doctor, they could defeat Rom’s elaborate locking mechanism.

“Did you have your session with Ezri?” Julian asked, breaking Garak’s criminal contemplations. “I sent you a message earlier asking how it went, but you never responded.”

A sharp twisting pain stabbed Garak’s stomach. He tipped his head back and studied the empty walkways on the Promenade’s second level. _Not only a traitor to my people, but a terrible partner. I suppose it’s true to form._ “My apologies.”

“I was worried.” Julian touched a warm hand to the small of Garak’s back as they walked. A sweet gesture, one he didn’t deserve after his negligence. “It’s not like you to completely vanish.”

“You could have come to check on me.” The nearer they drew to the lift, the more his restless energy sought an outlet, a target. “It’s not as though my shop is a great distance from the Infirmary.”

He winced at his own tone. Julian, however, merely looked at him. “What’s going on?” he asked with his usual disarming directness. “Is it just the decryptions? Or has something else happened?”

“Does something else need to happen?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Ah, humans. Such a narrow view of ‘answers’.”

The lift doors parted like the maw of a great beast. For a fraction of a second, Garak’s steps faltered. But no, he wouldn’t allow himself to be defeated again.

He passed into the abyss, into the dark cage of metal and circuitry. Each breath echoed in his ears. His head roared, heart pounded, hands quaked.

And then the doors to the trap sealed shut. They’d never open again. He’d die here, in this box. And he wasn’t just trapped in the box, in this coffin. No, the entire _station_ was a trap, a metal monstrosity suspended in vacuum. There was no air out there, no air in here, and he couldn’t _breathe—_

“Stop!” He slammed his hand against the door. Everything fell away around him, leaving only his frantic breaths, only darkness, only the walls closing in, crushing him…

“Computer, emergency override, open lift doors.” Hands caught him, pulled at him. “Garak, come on. Garak.”

He surrendered to those hands, just as he’d done in the crawlspace at Internment Camp 371. There was an odd lurch, a sense of being lifted, and then he was on solid ground again.

“Elim, look at me.” A warm hand on his cheek. “Garak, I’m here. You’re safe.”

Julian. Yes. “I can’t breathe.”

“You’re all right, you’re not trapped. We’re back on the Promenade.”

The Promenade. He blinked, twisted. The lift lurked behind them, doors frozen open by Julian’s emergency override. The damned contraption still looked like it wanted to eat him. It was at an odd angle now, though. Sideways.

_Oh. It’s me, not the lift. I collapsed again. Lovely._ He splayed a hand against the cold deck and pushed into a seated position. Julian knelt beside him, expression almost stubbornly professional. “Easy, Garak,” he said, grasping Garak’s shoulders. “Not too fast.”

“I believe I’m somewhat better now.” His heart still thumped dramatically, and his breaths raced as if he’d just flowed through a complicated series of stratagems. And his _head…_ oh, how it ached. But the walls remained stationary.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Garak?” Julian’s voice thrummed with barely suppressed fury. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble with the lifts?”

_All my lessons certainly haven’t gone to waste. He’s getting quite good at this._ “Why do you assume I was having trouble prior to this?”

That earned a look that the doctor usually reserved for his worst patients. Which was perfectly fair, in truth. “You should have told me. How many times did you try?”

The tightness in Garak’s chest finally eased, and he managed a deep breath. The air filled his lungs, clearing his head. “Three, but this was my best attempt. I actually managed to stay in until it began moving. Quite remarkable, to say the least.”

Julian caught his arms and tugged. “Come on. Get up.”

Absolutely not. Garak rocked his weight back and remained firmly in place. “I’m not up to another try, Doctor. I believe I’ll just sleep here tonight.”

“Do you really think I’d try to shove you back into a small, dark space?” Julian gave another pull, and Garak didn’t resist this time. “I’m not forcing you to come home, but I’m also not gonna leave you sleeping on the deck. You’ll give yourself hypothermia.”

Another annoyingly fair point. Garak let himself melt against the doctor’s side. “So, where are we going?”

“As you pointed out earlier, I happen to have an Infirmary not too far away.” The gently teasing note returned to Julian’s voice, and he rubbed Garak’s arm. “An Infirmary with lots of beds.”

That was certainly a better alternative than another trip in that damned coffin of a lift. Garak leaned closer, greedily absorbing the warm comfort that Julian so freely offered. “Lead the way, then.”


End file.
